Party of ‘No’ Waves Bromides, Calls It a Plan: Margaret Carlson

By Margaret Carlson -
Feb 3, 2010

If you repeat something often enough,
it becomes conventional wisdom. Republicans insist they are not
simply the Party of No. They are the Party of Plans, which they
press with gusto upon anyone who will pay attention.

Walk slowly through the halls of the Capitol and you’ll
have a Republican come up and whisper a bullet point in your
ear, a little like the saleswoman who waylays you with a spritz
of perfume at Bloomingdale’s. At presidential addresses,
Republicans hold up sheets of paper with their plans. At House
Republicans’ session with President Barack Obama last week at
their retreat in Baltimore, every other question was about their
unappreciated plans.

To their surprise, Obama recited some of their so-called
plans back to them, such a disturbing turn of events that Fox
News cut away to resume its regularly scheduled programming.

Obama observed that the plans fall well short of action
items. You can’t just wish something into being, like the
heading in their “No-Cost Jobs Plan” that reads, “Tear Down
Self-Imposed Obstacles to Economic Growth.” In other words:
clear-cut pesky regulations about mine safety and meat packing.
We might die, but we’ll be more competitive.

It’s certainly simple, full of bromides that would be at
home on a needlepoint pillow. With no specifics or legislative
language, it offered points including, “Halt Any Proposed Rule
or Regulation Expected to Have an Economic Cost,” “Keep American
Jobs at Home,” “Give Working Families Tax Relief,” “Rebuild
401(k)s and Spur Investment Through a Zero Capital Gains Tax.”

My Beach House

This is a plan like my plan to get a house on the beach.
Every spring, at the first hint of warm weather to come, I tell
my daughter about my plan. “What a great idea,” she says. It’s
how we celebrate the arrival of spring.

Like me, the Republicans have ideas with few details, no
course of action, no way to pay for what they propose. Lower
taxes and fewer regulations were the mantra of the Bush years,
which saw economic dips and downturns culminating in the
financial meltdown of 2008, plus a $1.3 trillion deficit.

Because their stimulus plan didn’t get the respect it
deserved, Republicans voted en masse against the one that was
translated into legislation through the sausage grinder of
committee hearings and floor debate.

When that $787 billion bill passed a year ago, Republicans
trashed it, not just refusing to acknowledge that it averted a
depression but claiming it hadn’t saved or created one job.
Boehner, in particular, claimed there hadn’t been any projects
in his home state of Ohio -- until his hometown newspaper
uncovered $52 million.

The Sheriff Speaks

Embarrassingly, a Republican sheriff from Boehner’s own
district went on CNN to declare his gratitude: “The stimulus is
working for me here in Butler County because I am keeping my
deputies and I am not having to lay them off.”

At the Baltimore Q&A, with some dramatic flair, Republicans
presented Obama with all their various proposals combined in a
booklet designed to show they weren’t the “party of opposition”
but the party of “Better Solutions.” Problem is, the Better
Solutions aren’t.

Rather, the booklet is a smorgasbord of more broad, diffuse
language that can’t be analyzed by experts, work as advertised
or translate into legislation. The financial reform plan is one
the banks love. It does not reform much of anything.

CBO’s View

Five of the 13 items were already in the GOP health-care
alternative, previously considered by the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office. The CBO, which Republicans swear
by, said this Republican alternative would have helped only 3
million people secure coverage and cut costs by only $68 billion
over 10 years.

The Democratic bill, flyspecked by multiple committees and
a flock of analysts and experts, covers 36 million more people,
trims the uninsured population to 4 percent of Americans and
narrows the deficit by $104 billion.

The Republicans proposed a budget, meantime, that relies on
yet more tax cuts, including eliminating for good the expired
estate tax.

Republicans under Bush reached tax nirvana by gradually
phasing out the estate tax to the point where, last month, it
reached zero. Without action, it reverts to pre-Bush levels in
2011, though Democrats will likely resurrect it this year.
Ferocious tax-cutters though they be, even Republicans are
likely to make any reinstatement retroactive, lest government
incentivize pulling the plug on people while the tax is off.

Football, Cocktails

A year ago Obama promised to reach out to Republicans. He
had a huge majority but wanted to govern across the aisle, as he
said in his visit to the lion’s den last week. He had them over
to the White House for our secular sacrament of watching the
Super Bowl. He followed up with small cocktail parties. One of
his rare nights out was to dinner with conservative columnists
at George Will’s house.

He appointed Republicans to his cabinet and gave Republican
senators a chance to put forward their proposals in the health-
care bill by way of the so-called Gang of Six. Many of their
concerns were accommodated, resulting in a bill so ugly in
places even proponents have to hold their noses. Yet Democrats
got not one Republican vote for their trouble.

When Obama was elected, Republicans wondered if it would be
the end of them. If anything, they should thank the president
for their resuscitation by making them so relevant in his quest
for bipartisanship.

We’ll know soon if he’s going to keep trying. The Super
Bowl is just three days away.

(Margaret Carlson, author of “Anyone Can Grow Up: How
George Bush and I Made It to the White House” and former White
House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News
columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

Click on “Send Comment” in the sidebar display to send a
letter to the editor.